EPSS Colloquium spring-2014

Though rare, heavy elements such as mercury, lead and uranium are of great interest as economic resources, pollutants, and potential tracers of critical environmental variables such as oxygen abundance. Variation in their isotope abundances gives a more detailed and robust picture of their behavior than elemental abundances alone. For instance, signatures in the three radiogenic isotopes of lead provided key insights for understanding environmental lead pollution. Alas, few elements show such rich variation in their isotopic compositions. Only recently have developments in mass spectrometry led to the discovery that (much more subtle) non-radiogenic variations are common in heavy elements, including mercury, thallium and uranium. This talk will focus on attempts to understand what causes isotopic variability in heavy metals, and what insights might be gained from high-precision isotope abundance measurements.